The Real Nature of Religion

101:4.1Be­cause your world is gen­er­ally ig­no­rant of ori­gins, even of phys­i­cal ori­gins, it has ap­peared to be wise from time to time to pro­vide in­struc­tion in cos­mol­ogy. And al­ways has this made trou­ble for the fu­ture. The laws of rev­e­la­tion ham­per us greatly by their pro­scrip­tion of the im­par­ta­tion of un­earned or pre­ma­ture knowl­edge. Any cos­mol­ogy pre­sented as a part of re­vealed re­li­gion is des­tined to be out­grown in a very short time. Ac­cord­ingly, fu­ture stu­dents of such a rev­e­la­tion are tempted to dis­card any el­e­ment of gen­uine re­li­gious truth it may con­tain be­cause they dis­cover er­rors on the face of the as­so­ci­ated cos­molo­gies therein pre­sented.

101:4.2Man­kind should un­der­stand that we who par­tic­i­pate in the rev­e­la­tion of truth are very rig­or­ously lim­ited by the in­struc­tions of our su­pe­ri­ors. We are not at lib­erty to an­tic­i­pate the sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies of a thou­sand years. Rev­e­la­tors must act in ac­cor­dance with the in­struc­tions which form a part of the rev­e­la­tion man­date. We see no way of over­com­ing this dif­fi­culty, ei­ther now or at any fu­ture time. We full well know that, while the his­toric facts and re­li­gious truths of this se­ries of rev­e­la­tory pre­sen­ta­tions will stand on the rec­ords of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our state­ments re­gard­ing the phys­i­cal sci­ences will stand in need of re­vi­sion in con­se­quence of ad­di­tional sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ments and new dis­cov­er­ies. These new de­vel­op­ments we even now fore­see, but we are for­bid­den to in­clude such hu­manly undis­cov­ered facts in the rev­e­la­tory rec­ords. Let it be made clear that rev­e­la­tions are not nec­es­sar­ily in­spired. The cos­mol­ogy of these rev­e­la­tions is not in­spired. It is lim­ited by our per­mis­sion for the co-or­di­na­tion and sort­ing of pres­ent-day knowl­edge. While di­vine or spir­i­tual in­sight is a gift, hu­man wis­dom must evolve.

101:4.3Truth is al­ways a rev­e­la­tion: au­torev­e­la­tion when it emerges as a re­sult of the work of the in­dwelling Ad­juster; ep­ochal rev­e­la­tion when it is pre­sented by the func­tion of some other ce­les­tial agency, group, or per­son­al­ity.

101:4.4In the last anal­y­sis, re­li­gion is to be judged by its fruits, ac­cord­ing to the man­ner and the ex­tent to which it ex­hibits its own in­her­ent and di­vine ex­cel­lence.

101:4.5Truth may be but rel­a­tively in­spired, even though rev­e­la­tion is in­vari­ably a spir­i­tual phe­nom­e­non. While state­ments with ref­er­ence to cos­mol­ogy are never in­spired, such rev­e­la­tions are of im­mense value in that they at least tran­siently clar­ify knowl­edge by:

101:4.61. The re­duc­tion of con­fu­sion by the au­thor­i­ta­tive elim­i­na­tion of er­ror.

101:4.72. The co-or­di­na­tion of known or about-to-be-known facts and ob­ser­va­tions.

101:4.83. The restora­tion of im­por­tant bits of lost knowl­edge con­cern­ing ep­ochal trans­ac­tions in the dis­tant past.

101:4.94. The sup­ply­ing of in­for­ma­tion which will fill in vi­tal miss­ing gaps in oth­er­wise earned knowl­edge.

101:4.105. Pre­sent­ing cos­mic data in such a man­ner as to il­lu­mi­nate the spir­i­tual teach­ings con­tained in the ac­com­pa­ny­ing rev­e­la­tion.